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| Photo: indianexpress.com |
It has been a fact of modern developing India that nearly
90% of its workforce is engaged in the unorganized sector, and that this fact
has been dealt with so far only academically or for research oriented purpose. Most
of the unorganized workers are daily wagers with no commitment by the employers
to provide work on a continued basis and even those with monthly salaries have
no job security or agreements. A sizable chunk of this workforce constitutes
the migrant workers who go to other states in search of livelihoods. All the
major cities of India have hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers engaged in
all kinds of activities from construction work to plying cycle rickshaws. Some of
them are able to rent accommodation while some others live on the pavement
tenements, slums and even on roads and bridges.
It is preposterous to imagine that a problem of such immense
proportions was not anticipated by the government of India while imposing the
Lockdown from 24th March, 2020. If fact, it is perhaps due to the ‘immense
proportion’ statistics that the government considered it practically or logistically
impossible to manage. They also might have thought that making elaborate preparations
to tackle the issue could very well defeat the purpose of lockdown or delay it
ominously. Besides, the main focus that time was ‘save lives’ by preventing the
possible exponential spread of the novel Coronavirus, and so, the government
wanted everyone stay home or to stay on wherever they were. The most desired ‘stay
home’ mission got derailed immediately, because the moment lockdown was imposed
all the employers dismissed the workers without even paying due wages or
salaries, and asked them to leave. Suddenly, millions of migrant workers found
themselves workless and penniless, and those who were in rented accommodation could
no longer afford to stay on. They found themselves shelter less too, and the
desperation to go to their home states grew and grew.
Of course, the concerned state governments, NGOs, religious
institutions and others jumped into the humanitarian fray and claimed or even
bragged about giving shelter and food to all with the slogan ‘no one will go
hungry’. However, as we mentioned earlier, achieving a mammoth job such as this,
involving millions, was practically or logically impossible. The migrant workers
protested in large numbers complaining of ‘no work-no shelter-no food-no money’
almost in all the cities; they thought they would surely die of hunger if not
by COVID infection and wanted to go home at any cost. The government did boast
of controlling the spread of the virus effectively,
and slowly brought in the issue of ‘livelihood’ in the later
versions of the lockdown; however, they still did not do anything to reduce the
sufferings of the floating distressed millions. And the migrant workers started
walking hundreds of miles home—some dying on the way of exhaustion while some
others getting mowed down by cars, trucks and goods trains; some of them who could
afford to spend a few bucks tried for rides on trucks or tempos or any mode of
transport at least for some parts of the journeys, with some of them still not
spared by tragic accidents.
Finally during Lockdown 3.0 the government of India started
providing trains for the workers—with no social distancing maintained, but only
to clear the huge unmanageable loads of humanity. Running of hundreds of trains
with various state governments arranging buses has not still achieved the goal,
and workers continue to walk home. At the moment, scores of such helpless humans
are getting killed in accidents daily. Shivers run down your spine when you imagine
the inhuman scenario; hundreds of workers—men, women and children—carrying head-loads
of luggage walking on the highways in scorching heat with no or little stock of
water or food; trying to rest their tired bodies on the concrete-rough of the
roads at night only to resume in the morning. And the parallel scenario: other
vehicles—SUVs, media vans, goods carriers and the like—kept on passing them;
media interviewing them, police checkpoints and inter-state border authorities monitoring
or allowing them; but nobody helped them or even tried to reduce their agony a
bit.
Yes, you are asked to stay home and stay safe, and some of
us somehow can afford it. But the luckless migrant workers struggle to reach
home with many of them never ever reaching— getting killed just few kilometers
away from their sweet homes. Stay home irony! This staggering Indian reality
hits you hard, very hard indeed, and you have no one to bank upon to tackle
this problem. The decades-old reality has come to the fore now, COVID-10 makes
it impossible to avoid it any further. However, in India money is always power:
power to influence or lobby or to pressurize, and since this vast mass of
humanity has no money power it is still uncertain if the authorities would
finally try all means handling this issue, if at all. After all the sufferings
and misery, some money is being allocated now for their welfare. Irony again!
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